


She-Devil

by Lyssandra_Med



Series: One-Shot [47]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Corruption, Creature Fic, Creature Hermione Granger, Dark Hermione Granger, Devils, F/F, Ritual Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:41:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23364121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med
Summary: What Hermione wants, she gets.What Bellatrix needs, she covets.Or; Hermione has an issue with rushing exacting magics.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange
Series: One-Shot [47]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1429282
Comments: 13
Kudos: 102





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Semi-edited.

There were very clear rules against this. She wasn’t supposed to be here, hadn’t been granted access or the right to walk and touch all that lay around her. She knew it. She knew it in her bones like she knew she  _ needed _ to be here.  _ ‘Stay out,’ _ they said.  _ ‘Forbidden,’ _ they’d called it.

And she had ignored all the signs. Ignored the warning. Ignored the imploring looks and rising tones, fought against even as she turned away from all the signs and ropes that barred her passage. 

_ This was wrong. _

She went in regardless. She  _ knew _ that the knowledge she sought out was forbidden to the vast population. A normal applicant would be screened or interviewed or shoved out through barrage of tests until they were given permission. Even some of the Professors had never once been granted access to this magnificence.

The Black tomes. Named for their design as well as their origin, as well as the magic kept within them. 

She had been told  _ ‘No,’ _ to the point of exhaustion. All of  _ this _ and all of  _ that _ were locked away from her. She happily waved them all the finger and walked in.

No one could manage to catch her here. No one on staff would know, none of her friends would find out, not even a student would see her entering or exiting. She bided her time before making the attempt, and while she could say the wait was worth it…

Well.

She was impatient.

Three years had passed since she had graduated from this school and two more wherein she combed through each and every magical library that she could get access to. She wasn’t proud of those years, couldn’t look back on them with anything less than abhorrence. 

She’d earned this trip, whether her supposed betters thought so or not. 

There were two Restricted sections in the Hogwarts Library. One the general public and students could use, provided that they had obtained a letter of assurance from a certified Professor, and another. One that was made to hold things back, to keep knowledge bound up that the Unspeakables hadn’t a need to keep. Nothing particularly dangerous on their own; the books were clean of curses and enchantments that could have hurt someone, and the Ministry had long ago made copies to keep housed within the bowels of the institution.

But these were the first editions. The only originals. Kept safe only on the surety of Hogwarts wards and enchantments. When she had been but a student she had wondered at these shelves. Looked at them with wonder from her place on the other side of a silver chain. 

She had thought her teacher's praise of the space to be nothing more than a boast to lure in stragglers to the Library. Get them with the pearl of truth, give them a glimpse of the forbidden, until eventually, they were enamoured or comfortable enough to come inside with regularity.

_ The greatest library since Alexandria. _

_ The foremost collection of first edition tomes in the world.  _

She had assumed all the words to be lies. She was sure that it was over-exaggeration meant to keep children and simpletons fawning over the place. Unfortunately, she hadn’t learned the truth until she left.

That was just as well. She wouldn’t have made a single step past that chain in her younger years.

But she was here now. She was here and she was  _ ready,  _ willing to suffer whatever came. Arms filled up with ill-gotten tomes. Protective enchantments that she had snapped with skill and precision. Protection was a flimsy lock. 

Off to madness she went, and burn all the rest.

\---

Hermione had known things, before. She knew more, now. Knew became known, became the past. Became a foundation for  _ more. _

Gods why had she ever opened those tomes.

Her eyelids burned. Her heart rate plummetted. She had seen things of wonder, had viewed with animosity as terror strode from ether to teach her more. Had tasted ichor, swallowed gold, let the flood in her throat become a fount which seemed unending.

She had held within her trembling palms the coldly beating heart of a foreign star, and then sent it back. Bad decisions had turned to good, had turned  _ mad. _ Bad good, good bad, and all of it was something more than nothing.

Was fulfilling.

The bones of her chest ached with it all. Her stomach, once so full and settled, now ached for  _ more.  _ She woke to find her skull stuffed up with cotton and harsh symbols. Bits of light and the silvered remnants of glyphs. Pressed into her vision was the afterimage of God. Gods. Goddesses. Ancient things that called themselves such once worship rose upon the Earth. Blackened things, maddened things, things they called  _ hope  _ and  _ hate _ with equal measure.

She brought forth her own madness just the same. Felt it change her skin, her mind and heart. Felt the stirrings of something else move in where once a girl had stood. All her edges rounded down until the inside was fit for consumption. Filled with sound. A thunderstorm that found a home within her blood, a cacophony in her heart.

There was no choice but to let the magic take root. She was learned enough to prevent it. But she had known that. Knew it could, knew that it would, predicted and prepared for it. 

And all of that for nothing. She was not strong enough, not sure enough,  _ she was simply not  _ **_enough._ **

Around and around and  _ down _ she fell. None of it would have ever been enough. Her heart pained her, forced her to cry out and beg for more with whimpers and whispers that fell on uncaring ears.

What had she wanted? What had she truly needed? What was there for her but to plead for a higher ending. More of what? More of  _ that. _ More  _ all. _ More  _ magic. _ More of that pitiful thing, that living thing, that being which breathed and spoke in words she could not understand except to know that she  _ did _ understand it, somewhere where rationality no longer lay. 

She had held that star.  _ Was  _ that star. Had wandered far and wide in search of memories not her own, theories she had never developed, the knowledge that first seemed harsh but later became a comfort.

That thing inside her head said,  _ ‘Go, go now, go  _ **_far_ ** _.’ _

She ran.

\---

When Bellatrix first learned that someone, somewhere, was looking for her it came with a simple note of surprise and something closely akin to suspicion. It was unusual.  _ Different. _

Exciting and somewhat alarming, all in the same moment.

She was never the sister that people would come searching for. That was for Andy, or Cissa, or even for her cousins. Hells, even  _ they _ didn’t seek her out, not now. 

But when she was told that a little witch was waiting on her doorstep, she flinched. Kreacher wasn’t liable to muddle words. He wouldn’t lie, or fib, or make up some story to get her moving. The aged Elf was capable of many things but turning against his Mistress was something he could never do.

And when she reached the stoop she saw for herself that the Elf was correct. A little witch stood there in a misbegotten assemblage; what looked at first glance to be a Hogwarts robe soon seemed to instead be something more. Or less. Just dregs and patches and all the things that said  _ poor. _

All the things that said,  _ ‘Don’t notice me, look away.’ _

Small, young, and by far much too inconspicuous to be anything at all but exceedingly suspicious. Bellatrix might not have been young, or old, but neither was she naive or losing her touch.

And her wariness was proven right. 

The moment the girl stepped into the foyer, Bellatrix knew it. A flash of light penetrated her eyes while something else threaded itself through her heart with a rush of magic. It felt like a ritual, or perhaps it was an embrace.

Like calling to like.

Except it shouldn’t have been. She had stowed that tome away and been certain that no one would ever find it amid all the others. And it appeared that she was wrong.

There before her stood a woman of rather indeterminable age. She was younger, or perhaps only just so. A decade, perhaps? More? She couldn’t tell for sure. The eyes of her visitor gave away nothing.

Revealed nothing, for nothing was what they were. Blackened sclera, a golden iris, a depth much like the ocean that surrounded their little Isle. There were horns atop her heard, curving things that seemed to peak from brunette hair and then wrap around her skull, points like daggers and material as ebony as the night.

She was haunting. Magic touched, magic starved, much more a beast than a woman.

A girl no longer.

The amusement of the situation finally hit home. Bellatrix hadn’t seen something half so interesting since her own mismanaged Ascension. Or perhaps since Albus decided it was his life’s work to hatch an Obscurial from an orphaned boy.

“So who might you be Pet?” Bellatrix’s words were whispers, gentle and serene. Barely a voice at all really. She ran a fingernail across the jagged tips of horns, along the pale curve of a cheek and the plump lip that followed.

She waited. And waited. And waited a moment more while the she-devil standing before her remained just as silent as the grave.  _ Something _ must have been decided upon in that interval, for the woman grew more on edge the longer that time passed them by. Her lips, her eyes, her whole body trembling before she finally spoke?

“What do I do?” The pools of black opened further, pools that Bellatrix felt drawn to despite the inherent danger that they represented. This one was untrained, unwilling. Unknowing in resolve and left to fend for herself.

She had so little of the resources that Bellatrix used, no safeguards or anything else of the like. To have been dragged so low by Lady Magic, to have let herself  _ become _ what it wanted above all else was a madness that she understood intimately. 

A madness that  _ she _ had surpassed when it became evident that it was to be her final outcome. Though the woman appeared to have  _ some _ semblance of control. She had been making rounds, looking for her for who knew how long. Had even arrived on her doorstep with a glamour instead of a shivering mess that would have been scooped up by the Ministry the minute she showed a horn in public.

Perhaps she could be saved.

Bellatrix smiled as prettily as she could, “I’ll show you. Now, come along Pet.”

She turned on her heels with neither an expectation that the stranger would follow her nor the presumption that she would leave. It would be -  _ if Magic willed it  _ \- or it wouldn’t.

Simple as that.

\---

Bellatrix’s fire burned her.

Rampantly consuming, unstoppable, filling each and every crook or cranny with enviable smoke that was now free to rise above it all. What flesh remained burnt out, a wick without any oil and all of it smothered beneath the heady gaze of infinity. 

Hermione was exhausted when they finished. Bellatrix was ecstatic. In gratitude, she was summarily put to bed with nothing to hold onto except her constantly shifting memories and the sparking static of Bellatrix’s magic. The she-devil kept to her word. She was a woman of design, a woman so very much more like her than she had first intuited.

_ Beyond _ the knowledge that they had both made the rash decision to call out to the darker side of magic.

Something was now wriggling beneath Hermione’s chest. Something welling up and seeking to subsume, to control all that which Hermione had unleashed. The magic that flowed down to her fingertips was as gentle as a stream or brook, neither too warm nor cold but something wholly comforting and in-between.

Bellatrix had toyed with creatures and evils and  _ magic _ that had slumbered undisturbed for millennia. She hadn’t been snubbed quite so harshly as Hermione, but still, she had taken her licks. Came through the eye of that storm with a mastery over her own body and magic.

Where Bellatrix had made covenants and pacts and deals with all her devils, Hermione had unknowingly become hers. She’d given it far too much reign upon her life, let loose the cork and drank the poison down. Bellatrix admonished her lack of foresight, rightly so, and Hermione promised to never let something like that happen again.

She promised to learn.

Be  _ better. _

Her body had paid its dues. Her mind, not quite so much. And she wouldn’t, so long as Bellatrix was there to help her.

Help which, by and large, was easy enough to obtain. The woman had seemed to hold no needs or desires except to  _ know _ and to _ grow _ beyond herself. Further  _ into _ herself. To hold and sculpt and writhe with another who was like  _ her. _

No matter how exhaustive she was. No matter how belligerent and filled with spikes as like as thorns she was.

Hermione had rankled at the brusqueness of the offer but in the end, could not turn it down. There would be no salvaging what remained of her mind or body should she turn down that offer. There would be no one to save her should she fail to grasp that proffered hand, no matter the other hand holding a dagger.

She knew she had to be willing to die, and be used, to obtain the knowledge and control that she desired. She was not willing to burn away from this world without leaving it marked.

Bellatrix would be the one to help her with that. She could purge the control of the fabled Goddess roosting within her chest, and leave her in a controlled image of madness instead. She could give her strength, give her power, give her everything that she dreamed of while still remaining whole enough to reap the benefits. There would have to be concessions of course.

Bellatrix did not work for coin but neither did she work for free.

And Hermione could live with those concessions. Who wouldn’t? They were a much better choice than being stubborn and exploding into a fiery mound of ash, or fading from this reality to the next.

A collar was locked around her neck. Thick and rigid, the whole length of it fashioned from Goblin silver and finished with a gentle clasp that sat along the nape of her neck. Always cold. Always there.

Simple enough, despite the demeaning look. And in the end, she could not help but admit that she enjoyed the visage in her mirror.

She would be a  _ servant _ just as much as she would be an  _ apprentice. _ Someone who had bought something so grand that nothing but everlasting servitude could ever repay it. 

But she kept her eyes, and she kept her tongue, even while it blackened and forked. She could switch, would have to whenever leaving the Manor, but within its walls she was safe.

She kept even the nails, rough and black and deviously sharp.

She kept it all, as Bellatrix kept her.

She learned it all, as Bellatrix taught her.


	2. Collection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Urged by the Cult to create another chapter. Here it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mildly edited.

There was something oddly soothing about the heavy certainty of magic. It would always follow that if you did  _ this, _ you would get  _ that _ in return. To be certain there was somewhat of an underlying fluidity to it all and while many methods were set in stone there were others that would go soft with time and age.

Little things would wear away to greatness, to change and slowly growing madness.

But in the short term their magic was much more solid. Unless they chose to directly act and change it there would be no deviation. It would remain the same.

All of it, and always the same.

And for a mind that was used to thinking in centuries instead of years, or millennia instead of decades, that stability could become insanity. Bellatrix knew that. Knew it in her bones and wherever her soul had fled. She could feel the way that hours passed her by with all the startling passivity of seconds. 

A stuttering pace. A boredom.

She  _ knew _ it. Her Pet knew it too, though not so much as she herself did. But she was learning, and both of them could acknowledge that as their duality continued they could feel time around them stretching and contracting, the spaces in between leaving them with nothing to do. Even the mysterious Patrons who had granted their boons seemed to acknowledge that  _ something  _ needed to change.

The status quo would not do.

\---

Hermione was exhausted to her bones. Lethargic overall, empty of all momentum. The roaring flames within her chest had been reduced to the stuttering of a dying fire, the remnants only smouldering through fumes and ash. She was well and truly burnt out.

Empty, heavy throughout her limbs and mildly content.

All her muscles ached with a deep-seated burn. They were sore, strained, limp where her skin was still bleeding.

The warm presence of Bellatrix’s palm still splayed against her stomach was a reassuring comfort. Sharpened claws dug into her skin to toy with scratches and let red lines crawl outwards from her navel. The older woman’s black eyes were tempting something within the pit of Hermione’s core, a need arising as she looked upwards from her position and nuzzled a cheek against the softness of Hermione’s thigh.

It would be a beautiful visage if beauty could earnestly be ascribed to one so clearly a devil. The black horns growing from her lover’s skull were twisted and curved upwards with daggerlike tips. Teeth so brilliantly white were stained red with blood, the fangs out and pressing gently against the curving roll of Hermione’s thighs. A golden iris peered up at her with just as much brilliance as her own, and Hermione felt herself fall into them despite her supine position.

The woman was a clear mishmash of human and inhuman, of darkly patterned glyphs and swirls that looped around glyphs in hauntingly archaic patterns. Calligraphy painted with blood and tattoos so deep she knew they etched her changed soul. 

Silver and stone, blood and gold. Her Mistress and her Lover, her Owner and her Partner.

“What’re you thinking?” she asked the preternatural woman in a breaking tone, a predator in her own right and just the hint of poisoned sweetness lilting through the air.

There was no answer for a moment. Another.

Bellatrix withdrew, screwed up her face and dug in harsher with her claws. “More, I’m thinking of more. I’m thinking of a circle, or a line. A triad. I’m hungry.”

Hermione waited for a moment before humming as a response, the sound an acceptance of Bellatrix’s words and nothing more. She was hungry as well. That voracious pit had opened up to let her know that soon she would want more. The star inside her chest was failing as it burned, collapsing inwards as it sought to consume everything.

That feeling would be their curse and in turn it would provide their boon. Always wanting, always needing more and never being able to calm that ceaseless burn. Knowledge exchanged for knowledge’s sake, power for power, and light for light.

And a darkness as well, though that reality was obvious enough to them both. What hadn’t been obvious enough initially, and indeed when discovered had been considered a worry, was the constant need for companionship.

The need to bleed their magic together while they fed their darkness hate, to curl around one another amid a pile of burning embers and form something that approximated a whole. Lacking, but similar enough for it to work.

A tug upon her collar and a tug upon whatever had become of her heart. It wasn’t something that they could call love. It wasn’t something Light, it wasn’t that beautiful or touching. It was something that could rend flesh. It was something that was red hot and purpose-filled.

Ownership in all, including name.

It was their directive and their mission and a  _ need. _ It filled them up with compulsions to begin and consume until everything had become nothing and nothing at all remained. Their shared hunger would be sated for a time if they obeyed its heady call. It would soothe, it would calm. 

And then with all the tender stillness of a dying ember catching fresh tinder, it would alight again. Their  _ fire _ would begin again.

Hermione ran sharp fingers throughout the riotous knots and curls of Bellatrix’s dark hair, “Hunger for what, exactly? We’ve cleaned the place out. We need another collection-”

“You misunderstand me.” Bellatrix pulled away, pulled up from Hermione’s body and then moved forward to lay atop her. She melted into Hermione’s space as sweat-slick skin touched skin and breath puffed out against her neck. 

Lips pressed along the column of her throat, “I want another. I want you, I want me. I want another one.”

That fading spark within her breast was embedded now with all the pain of a glass shard. It flared and heated, low and quiet. A wick quite close to the end of its life but burning with a spit of fat and fire.

Those words, that clarification. It brought her curiosity. Brought confusion. Wonder too, for Bellatrix and herself. She couldn’t deny the inherent thought. Another one? One like them?

But where would they find someone? Hermione had only fallen into it by accident. She hadn’t planned on this, it wasn’t supposed to occur. 

“Anywhere, anyone that I like.” Bellatrix leaned up to nip against Hermione’s lip, pulling it with her fangs and licking away the pinprick of red that dribbled forth.

“Anyone?”

\---

Anyone. Anyone meaning  _ one _ and meaning  _ her. _

Hermione didn’t know exactly why. Didn’t want to ask, and so she didn’t. Whatever her questions were worth to her they weren’t worth the same to Bellatrix. Best she leave it, best she went along instead and followed at her Mistress’s heels with a constant distance between them. What else could she even do? Say no? Propose someone of her own choosing?

How would that even work? All of her own friends were long gone to the years, far away and off doing bolder or better things.

_ Normal _ things, and she was nothing if not abnormal. 

They weren’t interesting enough. They didn’t manage to fill her heart with something close to desire and nor did they have enough acceptable attributes to be uplifted. No, it could never be someone that she proposed. She had alienated herself from every one of them and given no thought to where they would shuffle in mundanity. 

And so she fell in step behind Bellatrix’s long strides. Her body had been clothed in the visage of humanity and a robe that mirrored all her Mistress’s favourite colours. Black, a few hints of green, some patterning with silver thrown in as a highlight. It was simple really. Nothing so bold as to not remain inconspicuous and bolstered by her remaining at Bellatrix’s side with mouth well shut. Her eyes cast downwards towards where she belonged. Her presence subdued and empty, all the winding lengths of thread that filled her soul clipped off to remain unnoticed.

All that magic stuffed inside an ill-fitting suit. She positively  _ yearned _ to use it on something or someone. All their knowledge had been building, all that information percolating, all of it begging to be unleashed. The man that passed them by with nothing more than a glance and his bowler hat just barely holding to pudgy rolls of sweat-stained skin. She could reach out and tear him to pieces. Pull him inside out, make all of it red and use that fountain of pain to form a bead of power.

“Catch up, Pet. No dawdling.” Bellatrix’s words admonished her with a swift cut of her voice. Hermione packed the thoughts away and threaded off through the crowds, weaving and moving far too fast for a normal person’s patience.

_ ‘What does patience even mean,’ _ she wondered, a hand reaching out to grasp Bellatrix’s.  _ ‘Especially when I have forever?’ _

Their meandering path forwards through the crowds of Diagon left them weaving against passages and alleyways. There wasn’t a person at every corner but at every corner there was  _ something _ and Hermione could feel her need to lash out growing as the sun turned high above them. Before anything could happen though, they arrived.

A secluded little cafe somewhere along the farthest borders of Diagon with no obvious signage to label it except a simple piece of parchment pasted to the interior of the front window. A stylized  _ ‘B’, _ a quill, and nothing more. Simple tables out front, simple chairs tucked up underneath, a simple awning of black cloth to keep rain and snow from falling upon its patrons. 

Not that Hermione believed rain or snow could reach them, not with how crooked and winding the buildings that loomed above them grew.

It could have been perceived as quaint. It  _ would _ have been seen that way if Hermione had managed to get a hold on her growing hunger. She couldn’t, and so she wouldn’t see it like that. There were just too many bodies surrounding them, too many smells and sounds that she had been studiously avoiding for however long it had been since her ascension. And now here she was within the thick of it all and swimming through a sea of madness towards Bellatrix’s goal.

They strode on through the front door with chins held high and wary eyes as a chime above them began announcing their arrival to whoever manned the establishment. Perfect footsteps on perfect flooring, a small enough space that it could have fit within Bellatrix’s foyer. There wasn’t much around them both except for chairs to sit at and a long benchtop that had been carved out of an exotic wood that smelled subtly of magic.

Bellatrix squeezed Hermione’s hand and led them forward, twisting Hermione past her hip until she was deftly placed before her with the older woman’s arms encircling her waist. A hand dipped out, a claw upon the little silver bell that had been attached to the benchtop.

A ring.

Nothing.

Bellatrix tightened her embrace as she pressed lips into the flesh of Hermione’s overheated neck, teeth nipping and drawing blood. Side to side, swaying together to a music only they could hear, leaning backwards and forwards-

“What in Merlin’s fucking arse do you want, Bellatrix?”

Hermione opened her eyes -  _ whenever had she closed them? _ \- and looked off towards the corner of the shop. An older woman stood there in the spitting image of her Mistress and glaring with fire in her eyes.

Identical except her gait as she appeared from nowhere. Identical except the finer details of her eyes, her hair.

A hard grey against her Mistress’s unending darkness, a brunette tint beneath the faltering sunlight in place of a raven’s feathers. Similar yet distinct and immediately intriguing in a way that none of the rabble wandering about outside had been.

A spark that lit some hidden fire within Hermione.

She remained silent while observing the new arrival and kept quiet even when the tense pressure of Bellatrix’s claws poked through her skin. Basked beneath a sudden outpouring of magic when her Mistress made some decision or another, skin turning to gooseflesh and something warm and silken falling into the pit between her legs. It wasn’t very often that Bellatrix would display herself outside of their little home. An overt display of power was a swift method of alerting the Ministry, but here it seemed that Bellatrix wanted to put on a show. Hermione remained quiet, waiting on instruction, her collar a constant presence against her neck and tighter with every second. 

This display, this roiling warmth that spread outwards from the body behind her, it was a performance. A show. A preview for the other woman, a sister if Hermione was correct. Andi, or Andromeda. 

Names didn’t matter. Bellatrix would strip that from her eventually.

“I want quite a few things, sister dear. But in this instance, a simple moment of your time will suffice.” The velvety tones of Bellatrix’s voice rolled through Hermione where they were pressed together. She could  _ feel _ the crooked grin even if she couldn’t see it. “Would you be so kind as to give me that?”

\---

This was quickly becoming a bore.

Not only did Andromeda lack any of the more interesting tomes that she had been looking for but her Pet seemed to be far more tempted by the sight and feel of Andromeda’s magic than was rational. Not that  _ she _ detested that connection. She couldn’t, not so similar as they were and she would be lying if she said that she didn’t feel the same.

But it meant less attention paid to her and she didn’t like that. 

Didn’t like family reunions either, considered all of them bunk of the highest order.

“Andi, be a dear and take a look at this, will you? I can’t quite translate it,” she asked with honeyed words. She flipped the book in her hands to a random page while awaiting her sister’s attention, foot tapping impatiently against the edge of the carpeting and eyes flitting all about the filled shelves around them.

So many books. So many aged words, so much ink all bound and stuffed. The Black Library had been split apart into three sections upon their parent’s death with one portion dedicated to each sister and then more than a few tomes donated to Hogwarts itself when it became apparent Bellatrix could not safely keep them on her shelves. The knowledge kept hidden away inside those pages could have sent her away for years.

Or perhaps she would have ended up dead, the Ministry preferring clean hands over Dæmonic tomes.

She might have been nigh immortal when she turned over those words but still she had found herself constrained by this land's primitive laws. The Ministry would not take well to a devil walking among them and at the time she had lacked a death wish.

Now? Not so much. The experience would one day be worth the worry. Later though, and after she had her fun.

Bellatrix turned towards her sister when she finally arrived, a hand behind Andromeda’s back and the other offering the book. It was a simple matter to let magic overwhelm her, direct her fall and lay a sleeping Charm upon her form.

Her Pet grinned up at her while she stood there and swayed, the heat inside her chest begging her to make a claim.

\---

There was something devastatingly lovely about the tasking of a ritual. 

Hermione knew her place down to every little particular. Bellatrix knew hers, Hermione knew Bellatrix’s. She would stand still atop one point of the ground that had been marked and graded by chalked lines and powdered minerals. She would begin a chant to call forth magic, or perhaps she would begin but cutting alongside the interior of her wrist.

Follow the voices, enjoy the magic, feel fresh and the thrill of something born new.

_ New, _ in this case, being Andromeda.

_ New, _ in this case, being lucky enough to have an outsider's view of the madness that had recreated her in some dead God’s image.

_ “Calm yourself, Pet.” _

Calm. Placid. Hermione remembered being calm once. Calm was the intake of a steady breath, it was the feeling of normalcy, the feeling of being human and grounded. She was not human any longer. She was not normal any longer. She was not grounded to this reality. Her feet had long ago fled upwards to tread against the sky.

Now she was much closer to their old Gods. The Goddesses long sleeping. Things that had no names or reason attached to their being except what existence teased from worshipers.

This ritual, in particular, was calling to her. It drew forth her inner star and left her wanting, wavering, falling down where she stood and body rolling along in half-pained shivers when ice invaded her veins. Her twitching fingers turned into a rolling of her wrist, the arm it was attached to rolling and bending uneasily as she waited on her task to begin. So much waiting. So much wanting. So many minutes where she stared down at Andromeda while she was prepared, bled deep and body stripped clean.

Positioned  _ just  _ **_right._ **

Waiting on magic to begin, to call them all forward into greatness. To madness.

Both could be seen as one and the same, to her. When taken far enough she could find no distinction between the two. By all accounts, they still had a ways to go.

That tumbling feeling and high-born pressure set in again. It fell backwards from her mind, her body, the distinct sensation of viewing from outside of her body as a sudden disinterest left claws to dig into her skin. Watching? Waiting. Watching? Hungering. Waiting while she watched, hungering as she fed. Watching Bellatrix kneel, stand, bleed. Watching pale skin turn ashen, watching curved horns that glittered beneath the wavering candlelight. Watching as a piercing gaze deepened upon the form of a sleeping woman.

A soon to be sister, a soon to be wife. 

Oh, how she had always wanted a toy of her own.

The sound of waves crashing against their shore emanated and ruptured from the nether that surrounded them. From that void Bellatrix called, twisted along with maddening words. Red flooded them, beat starkly against the drabness of the room and swallowed what it could from them. It took what it was owed. The blood and viscera that surrounded them, coated Hermione, given freely as an offering and magnified by their energy.

She cut into her wrist, called, and answered.

\---

Bellatrix was well and truly lost. Lost inside of herself, inside of Hermione, inside of whatever was soon to become of her once beloved sister. Lost that heady thrum, the heat that wound itself through her core and flooded all her veins. 

All that  _ power. _

She had  _ wanted. _ She had  _ needed. _ Completion had been begging at her, three points upon a triangle that she had painstakingly sketched upon the ground.

Even standing was lost. Stability torn to shreds. Something whole and incomplete and so much more useful than being alone. She  _ had _ been alone. So very alone, so bereft of any companionship that she had given herself over to miasma while she waited on something to happen.

Forgotten by all her mortal friends. Abandoned by her family and left to her own devices. Left to books, to placid contemplation as she awaited the expanse of her new life. And then, as if by magic, her Pet had appeared. Breathed life back into her weary bones and stoked that slumbering flame into magnificence.

But fire burned out. Fire sputtered when down to ashes, fire consumed until nothing stable was left, fire blazed until the end. Fire needed fuel, and here she was in need of more.

The Ritual.

The need.

A magnificent crash rang throughout their hallowed space and filled the room with sound that roared against their ears. The air was swirling, carrying whispers and darkened secrets that were never meant to be revealed. The sounds coalesced into a fever-pitch of emotion that left Bellatrix panting into air that seemed too hot.

Too dry.

Her Pet experiencing the same.

Colours blended all around them as their vision shifted to perceive  _ something _ approaching them. They called to Gods. Gods, or whatever they could be called. Endless things, forgotten by time itself.

And  _ they  _ answered.

They with infinite faces and none of them like their own. They that tore through them all in a path towards Andromeda’s rigid form. They, and things that followed in their wake.

A thing that approved of their twisted bodies and broken cores. A thing that was rigid and unyielding, a will of iron and magic that covered them all. 

Her vision fled not long after that. Before it went she saw Andromeda’s new form, a similar build to her own but different enough to remain distinct. Beautiful. Timeless. 

Whatever came after that was not meant for her eyes or her mind. It wasn’t meant for her Pet’s as well, and she could feel the lesser demon fall down upon the ground. This was now for her sister, her sibling, the little straw-haired child that had grown into a near copy of herself. A copy that had, in the end, needed alteration to remain the same.

Her last thought, piercing with its intensity and in a voice not her own,  _ “More.” _


End file.
